Roaming The Google Streets

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About This Travelogue

This blog is about the lesser known but beautiful, wonderful, huge, unique and sometimes bizarre places around the World. Started on January 1, 2009, it is an outcome of my association with Google Earth Community, which I joined on Sept. 29, 2006. Since then I have been regularly flying to almost all the corners of WWW (Whole Wide World) and have virtually adopted the age old motto - Perfect time to see the World is after retirement.

My favourite section in the Community is "Fun and Games" - in which members post riddles and puzzles on almost all subjects and generally give hints for searching and locating the relevant places and or events on Google Earth. I have made several hundred posts in this forum and must have solved about the same number, though several were beyond my grasp. Believe me it is not easy to solve these riddles - Finding the answer is 90% perspiration (research) and 10% inspiration but it is pure 100% joy and sense of exhilaration.

This forum provides a stimulus to my brain and keeps it active. I strongly recommend this for those who have time and penchant for solving puzzles, but a word of warning – it is highly addictive.

My travels around the World are not limited to Fun and Games only, however many of the places being covered in this travelogue were found as a result of my researches for making posts in Fun and Games or trying to solve the riddles given therein.

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Tucson, Arizona has a bizarre and unique pedestrian-cum-bicycle bridge having shape of a rattlesnake. The snake is complete with open jaws, which act as an entrance, diamondback skin and a tail which rattles. The tail however is not exactly part of the bridge but it is a stand alone structure close to the other end of the covered bridge.

Known as Diamondback Bridge, though locals call it Snake Bridge, the bridge is 300 feet (~91.4 metres) long with a height and width of 16 feet (~4.9 metres) each. Completed in 2002, it was designed by artist Simon Donovan and is made of steel, concrete, fibreglass painted like the skin of the rattlesnake. The bridge is illuminated during night and is a popular landmark in Downtown Tucson.

As per the artist;

"... The Diamondback rattlesnake design was a logical solution for the bridge’s requirements. The bridge was already designed to be a relatively long, thin, caged structure – so why not round the edges, add a head and a tail, paint a pattern on the surface and create a giant rattlesnake? I feel that it is a perfect symbol of the Southwest desert environment. The snake is considered a benevolent, protective symbol in Native American mythology."

The Bridge has received many awards including a 2003 American Public Works Association’s Public Works Projects of the Year Award.

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